Two up is a fun little gamble.

As for the barber shop remix, there's actually a mob who has come
somewhat close to that.  A Japanese chain by name of QB House started
offering the no-frills approach to trimming scalp turf back in the mid
90s, compared to the hour-long ritual that was normal at the time.  One
third of the price (IIRC), one sixth of the time.

You check out the traffic lights in the store frontage (green - no wait,
yellow - up to 10 minutes, red - 15 minutes or more), lob, pay for your
haircut at the vending machine up front, sit down and wait, get called
to a seat, sit down, get your scalp turf cut, then scarper - I think
they aim for 10 minutes turn around from you sitting down to you
scarpering.  Might have been (the inspiration for) the one you saw, Graham.

On 31/12/19 9:29 am, Graham Donald - gndonald2001 at yahoo.com.au (via
tml list) wrote:
> 'Two-Up' is a name that has other connotations to Sophonts of
> Australian descent, nice idea though.
>
>
>
> On Monday, 30 December 2019, 10:09:53 pm AWST, Jeffrey Schwartz
> <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> There's a chain here called "5 Below" which has the schtick of selling
> things for $5 or less.
> There's a lot of it that's aimed at teen girls, but the electronics
> section is usually a source of good stuff - wireless charger pads for
> $5 ain't bad.
>
> But the place sparked the idea for me of a Starport/Startown chain
> called "2UP" which imports cheap consumer electronics from 2 tech
> levels above local. On a TL8 world, they'd sell bottom of the line
> TL10 tablet knockoffs, for example. The stuff that people on a TL10
> world would see as too lame to be worth carrying.
>
> On the other hand, imagine importing iPhone 1's and the original
> Android phones  along with cheap 802.11a routers to the 1900's...
> preloaded with something like Serval Mesh. They'd sell like hotcakes.
>
> On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 11:44 PM Graham Donald - gndonald2001 at
> yahoo.com.au (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com
> <mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com>> wrote:
> >
> > I was just wandering through my local shopping center and spotted a
> couple of things that might add 'color' to a spaceport or startown.
> The first are the stalls that sell small electronic gadgets ranging
> from custom covers to mobile phones to small power banks, data cables,
> speakers and things you can run off powerbanks like fans and reading
> lights. I've also seen a shopfront version of this that looked like
> something you'd find in a startown, the entrance was festooned with
> illuminated signs (Some of which advertised the shop, others were for
> sale.), and LED tape, inside was an array of gadgets ranging from
> cheap security equipment, to wireless speakers, powerbanks and lots of
> cheap data cables.
> >
> > The second is more interesting, it's a quasi-chain of shopfront
> barbers shops where the patron goes to the entrance, pays an upfront
> fixed cost (Not only much lower than a standard barbers shop, but the
> same irrespective of gender.) into a machine and gets a numbered
> ticket. The patron then waits for the number on their ticket to come
> up. Once it does they take a seat and someone will cut their hair (At
> the one I saw the hairdressers all seemed to be young 'university
> student' age people.) while they watch an entertaining video (One I
> visited had a 'Candid Camera' type show playing on small 'tablet' type
> computers.).
> >
> >
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